


Brands and Signatures

by BlueSkiedandClear



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Body Worship, During Dolce and Digestivo, M/M, Missing Scene, a poor excuse for metaphors, just a bit, random mythology references, scar kink, very very light smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:08:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25737070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSkiedandClear/pseuds/BlueSkiedandClear
Summary: First in Florence, then in Wolf Trap, Hannibal has two opportunities of looking at Will's scars, and Memory Palac-ing about them.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Brands and Signatures

**Author's Note:**

> A very short one-shot, inspired by this tweet:
> 
> https://twitter.com/ironandsilver_/status/1289999231365783552
> 
> As always, please point out every mistake.
> 
> Lots of love
> 
> BlueSkiedandClear

The Chesapeake Ripper did not leave signatures, it was known.

However, Hannibal Lecter considered the scar on Will Graham's belly the only signature he left that truly identified him. Not as Chesapeake Ripper, not as the Monster of Florence, not by any other insignificant name the newspapers would have attributed to him.

Just like Hannibal Lecter.

As much as he killed those he considered rude, crude, or a ugliness of the world, Hannibal rarely considered any crime to be personal.

Branding Will had been extremely personal.

Just as Will's behavior had been extremely personal towards him. Forgiveness, after all, is a personal act. Intimate. That requires two people to be accomplished.

Hannibal quickly ridded of the knife with which Will intended to forgive him, and calmly turned to his unarmed figure. He took a moment to recall from the rooms of his Memory Palace the moment when Will should have been with him within the frescoed walls of Palazzo Capponi.

A special dinner, clothes commissioned for him, tea cups that had never been broken. Abigail playing the harpsichord.

If Hannibal had been a normal man, those fantasies would have been painful. Instead, he felt an unusual sense of peace. Will, as always, had surprised him, messing with his carefully crafted plans. His betrayal was a little matter, everyone betrays. It was the refusal to leave the bitter in Hannibal's mouth, like the cork aftertaste in an otherwise prized wine.

Fate and circumstances seemed to constantly bring them back to the same point.

Hannibal made sure Will was completely sedated, before taking him in his arms and starting to take care of him.

He began to undress him with scientific detachment, the signs of the fall clearly visible on the body. He smirked at the thought. Thrown off a train.

He removed each garment in a curt manner. They were unrecoverable because of the bloodstains, and they weren't the clothes he wanted to see on him. He had thought of a proper wardrobe for Will. Nothing overly flashy, but elegant. He would have shone by his side.

It would have been extremely rude to watch him at that moment, unconscious, and Hannibal did not need to linger in a morbid contemplation, but allowed himself to satiate his aesthetic curiosity with a quick overview.

It was the slender but well-modeled body that could be seen under the layers of his hideous under-branded clothes. His creamy complexion had always been one of his favorite attributes, a romantic heroine skin stretched out on manly limbs. An exquisite contradiction.

The perfect exaltation for his dark curls and beard, that thin fleece of wolf fur.

Hands as a fisherman, as a murderer and as a pianist. A mix between a disciple and an artist.

Arms that he would have liked to sculpt. Legs he would have liked to see tending in spasms and tremors, again.

And his signature.

Like the crack in an athlete statue.

As a former surgeon, he knew exactly how hard to sink the blade, and how much to slide it. Similarly, he could accurately imagine the operation to close the wound, as if he had performed it himself.

Its irregular line broke the perfection of that canvas with moving drama.

The scar tissue has its own peculiarities. Virtually insensitive, it seems to have a different temperature from the rest. It retains a residual pain that never leaves at all. Thin and almost impalpable, it remains as a memory.

Hannibal was not surprised by the significance that various cultures had attributed to scars over time.

That specific scar had the value of a memento. What it had been, that could have been.

Will could have lived with it, if he hadn't come looking for him armed with forgiveness.

Quietly resigned, Hannibal took Will to the tub and washed him carefully, without lingering with the touch on his signature. It was enough to know it was there.

*

There are many ways to assert possession. You can give it a name. You can label it. You can put a signature. You can print a brand.

The brand applied to Hannibal Lecter still burned, a deaf and distant sensation on his back, but the cold inhibited the pain. He had other things to think about.

He had made a promise, and he was keeping it. It was a falsely disinterested promise. It didn't matter what Alana believed, if she gave him a chance to achieve his goal.

He had made it, he thought with calm determination wich followed a murder, as he heard yet another rabid dog of Mason Verger fall behind him, a thud suffocated in the fresh snow.

He knew he didn't have to fear anything. What he wanted was back in his arms, inert. Like Selene with Endimyon, Hannibal also seemed doomed to watch Will only while he was asleep. Or unconscious, to be honest.

Cordell was a rare quality pig, but he had good medical skills. What he gave Will would have made a brown bear harmless.

He weighed in his arms as he must have weighed Andromeda unconscious in Perseus's grip. She chained to a rock at the mercy of a dragon, he paralyzed at an operating table at the mercy of a pig, on behalf of another pig. But the cause was the same: too much beauty, which makes the gods envious and men greedy.

Hannibal carried Will without greed, the pace slow but firm into the high snow. Blood and pigs behind, tea cups and equations in front.

An image of peace.

A hearty dinner, flames crackling in the fireplace, snowflakes falling slowly. Will in a cachemire sweater, Abigail playing the piano.

Peace.

Under normal conditions, Hannibal would hate Wolf Trap house, but it was part of Will's world, and it had a few rooms in his Memory Palace. He entered the frozen house without difficulty, while Will risked hypothermia.

Hannibal started the warm-up and went in search of clean clothes.

Again, after so little time, he found himself faced with the disarming perfection of Will's anatomy.

He had no qualms, this time, in watching. He almost lost him, yet.

Losing Will at his hands was fair, balanced. Painful, but appropriate. Losing him at the hands of greedy and perverted pigs was... Inelegant. A waste.

The most logical thing would have been to warm him up with his body, but that was a barrier that he didn't want to overcome. It was like embracing a marble statue and hoping it would come to life.

There was no Aphrodite to listen to his prayers as a creator, like Pygmalion.

Hannibal had done and undone it. Now he wanted to recompose. He had to reassemble.

He wrapped him in all the blankets he found and looked at him, his eyes returning to his signature on his belly over and over again. He was certain that to the touch it was identical to antlers velvet.

He decided to make sure: with all the attention he was capable of, he opened his palm on his navel and slid two fingers along the length of the scar, following the path without ever leaving the margin.

It was a glimpse of mother of pearl, covered in silk, opened in lamb scroll. A constellation that started from under the liver and ended up under the spleen. Irregular, but absolute in his design.

A betrayal elevated to immortality.

His eyes slid to his forehead, where his work had fortunately remained unfinished, an incomplete signature. Superfluous, but no less beautiful. A pact of forgiveness.

Hannibal had forgiven Will, and allowed him to shine again in the world.

His hand stayed on the scar, his smooth presence well tangible under his fingertips. He continued to follow that path, slowly, back and forth, measuring it millimeter by millimeter.

Hannibal wondered how it tasted like. He brought to his lips the fingers that had caressed it, barely touching.

He wanted to press his mouth on that silk smile, but it was another barrier not to be overcome.

In the gold-and-white alcova of his Memory Palace, it was a pleasure he could indulge in. He felt the warm, thin skin on his lips, every curve of the scar between his teeth. He repeated the same journey on his mouth, on his closed eyelids, on each finger of both hands, on his throat.

In the white and frosty reality, Will lay motionless, untouched, the scar that spread and tightened slowly to the rhythm of his breath.

It was a wonderful sign, the accidental fingerprint in the tempera or oil, which creates a nuance, and makes the painting unique.

Will was unique. And his, in every possible way.

He bore his signature.


End file.
